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Rich, Rare & Red A Guide to Port Fourth Edition
Ben Howkins Quiller
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For Clarissa
Photo credits: Page 35, 129, 145, 152, 173, 213 The Fladgate Partnership Page 1, 159 Filipe Braga Page 11, 15, 73, 83, 119, 121, 183 Symington Family Estates, JoĂŁo Pedro Marnoto Map reproduced with kind permission of Symington Family Estates
Š 1982, 1987, 2003, 2014 Ben Howkins First published in hardback in the UK by The International Wine and Food Society and William Heinemann Ltd Second and third editions published in the USA by The Wine Appreciation Guild Fourth edition published in the UK by Quiller, an imprint of Quiller Publishing Limited British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978 1 84689 201 1 The right of Ben Howkins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Although all reasonable care has been taken in the preparation of this book, neither the author nor the publisher can accept liability for any consequences arising from the information contained herein, or from use thereof. Design by Sharyn Troughton Printed in the UK by TJ International
Quiller An imprint of Quiller Publishing Ltd
Wykey House, Wykey, Shrewsbury, SY4 1JA Tel: 01939 261616 Fax: 01939 261606 E-mail: info@quillerbooks.com Website: www.quillerpublishing.com
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CONTENTS
Foreword 6 Preface 7 Note on the Fourth Edition 8 Acknowledgements 10
I. Introduction 11 II. Port – An Historical Perspective 15 III. Vineyards and Vines 35 IV. Port Maturation 73 V. The Leading Port Producers 83 VI. Port Styles 119 VII. Vintage Port 129 VIII. Visiting the Region 145 IX. Oporto 159 X. World Markets 173 XI. Fifty Shades of Port 183
Appendices I. Vintage Ports and Their Shippers 214 II. Glossary of Wine Terms 217 III. Further Reading 219 Index 221
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PREFACE
PORT. More than a wine, it is one of Portugal’s most famous and well-loved products. It is found worldwide, and is, therefore, the most international of this country’s unofficial ambassadors. Port’s unique characteristics result from its place of origin, the Douro, the world’s oldest demarcated and regulated wine region and of capital importance to Portugal. Its majestic river links the rugged, striking beauty of the mountain vineyards to the urban landscapes of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia where, for centuries, Port traditionally has aged. Port is the common denominator uniting two World Heritage Sites. The Douro is increasingly a much soughtafter tourist destination for discerning travellers looking to enjoy the very best of Portugal. The mission of the IVDP (Port and Douro Wines Institute) is to certify, promote and protect Port. It represents all wines produced in the region that are eligible to bear the Douro or Port Seal of Guarantee. However, the IVDP takes its responsibilities one step further as it thinks ahead and reaches out to both existing and new consumers from all over the planet, promoting innovative ways of looking at and enjoying Port. It is in this context that the IVDP views this book with great satisfaction. Due to Ben Howkins’ vast knowledge of the region and its wines, Rich, Rare and Red will no doubt prove to be a valuable tool in furthering consumers’ understanding of the versatility of a unique wine, providing insights that will take the reader into another dimension of enjoyment and guide them on a fascinating journey of discovery of a wine, a region, a heritage and a way of life. Manuel Cabral, President, Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto 7
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INTRODUCTION Port fills the soul. At least it fills mine.
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Robin Reid
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Rich, Rare and Red
Port is produced in what must be one of the most inaccessible wine regions in the world: the Douro Valley in northern Portugal. No one would come across these vineyards by accident. The roads through and around them have been established during centuries of history; the countryside is wild, majestic and beautiful. Produced in the 900-square-mile demarcated area of the Douro Valley and consumed in more than eighty countries, port is a wine which has had its fermentation arrested at the time of the vintage with grape spirit. This process produces a medium sweet fortified wine as some of the natural sugar content of the grape is retained. The port shipper’s art lies in the blending from a myriad of farmers’ vineyards, using many different grape varieties, basking in several microclimates that vary from year to year. It is this essential and critical labour of love that cannot be imitated elsewhere. The ‘river of gold’, as the Spanish name Duero and the Portuguese Douro signify, rises in Spain. It flows west, entering Portugal at Barca d’Alva and, twisting and turning through mountainous canyons flanked by vineyards, reaches the Atlantic Ocean at Oporto – a name that, in Portuguese, literally means ‘the port’. The desolate, lonely area where port is produced is in 250,000 hectares on either side of the River Douro. Until the 1970s, the river was the lifeline and the thoroughfare of the wine farmers – they had no other means of reaching the outside world. The barcos rabelos, which are single-sail boats that went up and down the river, had to be steered through dangerous rapids; farms could only be visited by walking or on horseback over rough country. The pipes (casks each containing about 550 litres of wine) had to be lugged down to the river by ox carts and manhandled aboard. Nothing to do with port production has ever been easy. 12
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PORT – AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Any time not drinking port is a waste of time.
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Percy Croft
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Rich, Rare and Red
No wine is more inextricably linked to its country of origin than port. It is even included in the name of the country itself. The history, as it relates to this guide, starts with Romans. They crossed the River Douro from the north in 137 BC, invading the Celtic inhabitants of Portugal, or Lusitania as it was then called. The land they saw must have been totally unsuitable for their agricultural needs and, in order to grow crops, they had to build terraces, thus laying the foundations of the vineyards that we have today. They could not do without wine and so they set about planting vines as well as cereals. However, the Romans were not the only ones to cross the Pyrenees. During the Dark Ages of the first century several barbarian tribes came in, intent on the sun and the easy living it provided. One of these, the Swabians, who were good horsemen, journeyed into the Douro Valley and found the local wine tempting enough for them to stay. They in turn spent the next 400 years keeping at bay the Visigoths, who were trying to expand their kingdom northwards up the Iberian Peninsula. A bored faction seeking peace decided to invite the Moors from North Africa to cross the Straits of Gibraltar and, with alacrity, these captured the treasure of the Visigothic Kings and reached the Douro from the south in 716. But the Moors were essentially southern peoples. They did not appreciate ‘this ignorant country where naught is heard but the sound of tempests’ (St Fructuosus, Bishop of Braga in the seventh century) and they gradually withdrew from northern Portugal, leaving behind a few Moorish castles in Numão and Lavandeira. This territory, the land between the rivers Minho and Douro, then called the Territora Portucalense, later the County of Portugal, became the nucleus of the Portuguese kingdom. Every student and lover of wine wants a point from which to date the cultivation of a particular classic wine and to understand why it occurred in any one area. After the inevitable Romans, the first important date for Portuguese viticulture is 1095. 16
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Port – An Historical Perspective
Two years before, in 1093, a young French adventurer, Count Henry of Burgundy, married Teresa, the illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso VI of Castile and León. The king threw in the then obscure County of Portugal as part of the dowry. The count, being a cousin of the powerful Duke of Burgundy, was partial to the sword and the grape. It is said that the native Galician wines were too thin for his robust taste and that he became homesick for the rich, strong wines of his home country; so he imported cuttings of the Pinot Noir grape variety from Burgundy into Portugal, hoping to produce fuller wines. The Portuguese, with diluted chauvinism, soon renamed this the Tinta Francisca. Today, the Tinta Francisca is still one of the dominant grape varieties used in the Douro Valley. So the marriage of Portugal and wine had really begun and ironically the marriage of Henry and Teresa provided the founder of the Portuguese kingdom. Their one son, Alfonso Henriques, born in 1109, was a noisy, ambitious youth and by the time he had come of age, his father having already died, mother and son were locked in a battle for control of the country. Son defeated mother at São Mamende and, after brushing with his cousin, Alfonso continued his expansion south to take in the land from Viana do Castelo in the north to Coimbra in the south, and eastwards almost to the modern frontier between Portugal and Spain. During this time, Alfonso progressively ennobled himself from count to duke, from duke to prince and, finally, to king. Aided and abetted by various Anglo-Norman, Flemish and German crusaders over the next half century, King Alfonso I saw his originally tiny country grow to embrace most of present-day Portugal. The new kingdom received official recognition in 1178 when Pope Alexander III confirmed Alfonso in his conquests and recognised the rights of his successors. The final conquest of the Algarve was achieved by his grandson, King Alfonso III, in 1249, when Faro capitulated. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries heralded the beginnings of sea trading; merchant venturers from Italy and England converged on Lisbon, merchants from Genoa and Lombardy brought spices overland from the East and the English 17
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